Conversations With Dead People
by GougeAway
Summary: She heard it before she saw it. Or felt it, maybe. It was a silent shift in pressure, something changing in the air; a brush of something powerful and intangible against her skin – and when Hermione turned around, there was a door there. [The war is over, and Hermione's life is in pieces. The Room of Requirement answers Hermione's plea for help - in the form of Fred Weasley.]
1. Prologue

**Conversations With Dead People**

 _Prologue_

She heard it before she saw it. Or _felt_ it, maybe. It was a silent shift in pressure, something changing in the air; a brush of something powerful and intangible against her skin – and when Hermione turned around, there was a door there.

She stood there, staring.

It stared back. An ornate thing; an arched, gargantuan dark oak door with intricate wrought brass detailing, swirling and snaking over the panels like branches.

And she remembered, suddenly, violently, that she was on the seventh floor.

And she frowned, shaped eyebrows furrowing, and when she mentally retraced her steps, she realised that in her rare display of absentmindedness she had paced the length of the corridor three times. She had passed the great expanse of blank wall three times, with one permeating thought:

 _Help me._

She stifled a sob. It was a strange sound, full of both despair and wonder; she remembered a Muggle fairy tale her mother once read her, and she feels like Bluebeard's seventh wife, shaking hands steadily reaching towards a door with some terrible destiny awaiting her inside.

 _'There she paused for a moment, thinking; but the temptation was so great she could not conquer it.'_

The lioness inside her roared as her fingers closed around the cold brass of the door handle – _don't be so stupid, it's just a door!_ – and pulled.

"Hello Hermione!" Fred Weasley bellowed, and the last remaining thread of Hermione Granger's sanity snapped and spiralled endlessly out of her reach.

* * *

(A/N: My first ever forage into the Harry Potter fandom, for some reason, despite it being the first series I ever loved. This is just a very short, toe-dipping prologue - I have the story fleshed out and the rest of the chapters will be much longer. I would love to know if a story like this already exists, because I searched high and low before resorting to writing my own. Feel free to review. Cheers!)


	2. Chapter One: The First of September

Conversations With Dead People

 _Chapter One: The First of September_

The first of September 1998 came and went; the day remarkable to Hermione Granger because of how truly unremarkable it really was. She'd woken that morning in her bedroom in 12 Grimmauld Place, cold sunlight streaming through the cracks of the blinds, to a world that was completely and utterly normal, on the verge of what would be, for the first time in her life, a completely and utterly normal school year at Hogwarts.

She hadn't had one of those. Ever.

She'd gotten dressed quickly, in the school robes she had laid out over the back of the worn desk chair in the corner of her room the night before. So desperate had she been to return that her cases were already downstairs, waiting for her; so desperate that she had opted for her witch robes rather than her usual Muggle jeans and jumper; she wanted, so badly, to just be in the Gryffindor dormitory as she'd once known it again, warm and safe and happy even while the rest of the world had grown darker and sadder and harder around the three of them.

Hermione had lain there in her bedroom for a few minutes longer than she usually would have, that morning: the morning of the first of September 1998. She laid in her single bed with its red sheets bundled around her, staring idly at the light yellow walls she'd painted herself three months previously, and at the two large bookshelves taking up the far wall that she'd been steadily filling up ever since they'd moved in permanently. They lay almost empty now, two hundred and seventeen books packed away in a small beaded handbag that had once held a tent, spare clothes for three people, healing potions and a portrait of a former Hogwarts headmaster, amongst other things.

She looked around at this place that had been her haven for the last three months, and couldn't remember what it had looked like before. It was a room on the third floor that had once been shared by Fred and George Weasley in the early days of the Second Wizarding War and the refounding of the Order of The Phoenix. She'd been in this room just once, in those days; countless more last year, searching for a locket that was never there.

The first time she'd set foot in this room, it had been dark and dank. This, she remembered only vaguely, because any gloominess it should have held had been dissolved by the sound of Fred's laughter and the sight of George's smile as they tormented Ron about something or other – his former crush on Viktor Krum, maybe. Cedric Diggory had just been killed and the world had become a terrifying place, but standing in the doorway of this dusty bedroom three years ago, only one month from turning sixteen, Hermione Granger had seen a light in all the darkness. Fred had said something funny then, and she had laughed despite her indignation on Ron's behalf, and when Fred had turned his eyes towards her to share in her laughter, she had been so unbelievably grateful for the existence of Fred and George Weasley that she had forgone scolding them altogether; content to just _be_ for a little while longer.

Maybe that was why she had chosen this room. And maybe, in some way, it was why Ron hadn't.

And maybe that, in turn, was why she had chosen only a single bed, while Ron had, at the moment, opted for his old room at The Burrow.

Suddenly, she found herself wishing more than ever that Ron would just come with her. As it was, he'd chosen to skip seventh year altogether with Harry and dive straight into Auror work. There were some obligatory tests in the beginning; more of a formality than anything else, and the two war heroes had passed with ease. Shortly after beginning his career, Ron had opted to stay at The Burrow for a while longer – there was a hole there where Fred used to be, and Ron was determined to try his best to fill it. His parents needed him.

Hermione understood. If she could be home, _her_ home, in her parents' house, with photographs of the three of them together lining the living room walls, and them both looking at her with recognition in their eyes and smiles on their faces again, she'd give whole worlds and her own soul and everything in between.

And maybe that, she knew deep down, was why she was so desperate to return to Hogwarts. As much as Harry had made Grimmauld Place her haven, it wasn't her home the way her parents' house or Gryffindor Tower had been. For all the danger she'd faced in Hogwarts, for all the tragedy – it had always been and would forever be the place where two boys had saved her from a mountain troll in a bathroom and started an unstoppable movement between them; a bond so strong that it had survived three dead guardians, two missing parents, two jealous relationships, countless Rita Skeeter articles and an actual war.

She missed them the way they used to be. She loved both Harry and Ron with all of her soul, and was immeasurably proud of them in their Auror careers, but she also felt dismayed at their decision not to return to Hogwarts with her. It was irrational, she knew, at almost age nineteen, but she felt as thought their last chance at childhood together was slipping through their fingers and that they didn't even notice. It was strange to her that Harry, especially, had opted not to retake his seventh year – Hogwarts had been his first home, and although she knew he loved Grimmauld Place because it had been Sirius's home, Hermione knew it wasn't his real home any more than it was her real home.

Thinking of Harry downstairs, all alone in the kitchen making scrambled eggs and toast, suddenly made her feel incredibly guilty for lying around in bed. So she had gotten up, pulled on her witch robes, and with one last lingering look at the room where Fred Weasley had once made her laugh, she left it all behind.

* * *

The morning of the first of September 1998 went more smoothly than it should have. Hermione Granger had expected three-headed dogs or basilisks or hippogriffs or dragons or thestrals to charge down the door (only then did she realise the myriad of magical creatures that had played such giant roles in marking each year of her life). She had expected some emergency in the department of mysteries that needed their attention. She had expected them to go on a great big camping trip and end up running for their lives. She had expected to sit down at the dining table only for Harry to tell her his scar hurt and that he'd had nightmares, and she had expected to have to grab that beaded handbag again with all of her books in it, but also with all of the health supplies and the tent and the spare clothes still there because she'd never really believed, not truly, that it was over. Hermione Granger had still fully expected Voldemort to appear and kill them all before she ever got to enjoy her completely and utterly normal first day of her completely and utterly normal last year of Hogwarts.

She had, also, expected Ron Weasley to suddenly decide that he loved her more than he loved being an Auror and to show up, trunk packed, and declare he was coming home with her.

None of these things came to pass, but Ron did kiss her long and hard and tell her that they would meet in Hogsmeade any spare moment they had. She had expected this notion would make her feel better about leaving them behind, but that never really came to pass either.

And so, when it became clear no terrible life or death situations were about to interrupt their goodbyes and prevent her from returning to the place that only hours previously she'd been dying to go home to, Hermione turned on the spot, luggage in hand, and apparated to Kings Cross Station.

She didn't even splinch anything.

* * *

On the first of September 1998, Hermione Granger shared a compartment with Neville Longbottom, also resitting his seventh year, and Luna Lovegood who came back for her sixth. Ginny Weasley was conspicuously absent, having decided to focus on her Quidditch career instead of pursuing her academic studies. Hermione felt the loss of her acutely, but after everything they had all been through, Neville and Luna were familiar faces in a more or less unfamiliar world, and she found herself incredibly grateful to be sat across from them the way they were, talking about their school subjects and wondering who would be coming back to retake the year, who this year's Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher would be, and _I'm terribly excited for the feast, our vegetable garden has been overrun by Blibbering Humdingers – not even radishes are repelling them now…_

It was normal.

It was normal, and Hermione tried not to notice how empty the rest of the train carriages seemed, or how fewer thestrals were needed to pull the carriages to the castle once they departed the Hogwarts Express. She tried not to notice the empty spaces at the tables in the Great Hall, and she tried her best not to feel immeasurably guilty when Lavender Brown's name was called among those of the dead during a toast before the Sorting Hat ceremony. In this she failed, because she had shared a room with the girl for six years of her life, and had scorned her over a boy – a boy she now had, sort of, while Lavender Brown would never have Ron or any other boyfriend ever again, and it struck Hermione that Lavender had never been at fault in their sixth year when Ron had decided to stomp all over her feelings because he was jealous of someone she had kissed two years previously.

But Hermione wasn't angry with Ron, so she killed the thought before it could be born, and busied herself with trying not to notice other things. Other things, like Draco Malfoy sitting apart from the younger Slytherins at his table, and the blatant absence of Crabbe and Goyle. In fact, the blatant absence of any Slytherin sixth and seventh years except Pansy Parkinson, who sat a few seats up from Malfoy, but who was also isolated in her own way.

There was a time when they would have sat here, all three of them at the Gryffindor table, and suspiciously, malevolently watched Draco Malfoy for any sign of oncoming trouble. As it was, the girl who had once punched Malfoy in the face could only muster up the faintest sense of pity for him as she watched him eat sparingly, all alone with his eyes fixed on his goblet as though wishing it was filled with something stronger than pumpkin juice. There was not one person who had lost nothing in the war, and she had the sense that Malfoy had lost something terrible – not in the end, when his side had lost (because in the end he had cast off all sides), but before that, sometime around their sixth year when he had lost his arrogant smirk and gained dark circles beneath his eyes instead.

Hermione found she didn't want to think about Draco Malfoy either, or Pansy Parkinson (she could still remember Pansy's suggestion to turn Harry in to Voldemort four months ago and it was enough to make her blood burn hot and angry, simmering beneath her skin, and she realised in that one moment that sharing any class with Pansy Parkinson was going to be even more difficult than previous years).

Hermione tried not to notice other things instead, such as how, despite the grief hanging in the air and the absence of Harry and Ron on either side of her, she finally, after a whole year, felt like she'd come home. She tried not to notice how yellow with joy it made her feel. At this, also, she failed. And smiled.

* * *

(A/N: I finally did this and now I'm in full swing for this story. Hope you enjoyed! If I've done anything particularly well or badly, let me know.)


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